Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!micor!isishq!testsys!doug From: isishq!testsys!doug (Doug Thompson) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Thinking Machines Message-ID: <574426895DN5.41B@testsys.uucp> Date: Mon, 03 Dec 90 15:15:34 EST References: <9^}^-!+@rpi.edu> <1990Nov30.145228.21484@abcfd20.larc.nasa.gov> Distribution: na Organization: SKAN Communications - Ottawa Lines: 123 In article <1990Nov30.145228.21484@abcfd20.larc.nasa.gov> (John Burton) writes: > In article <9^}^-!+@rpi.edu> lunwic@aix03.aix.rpi.edu (Jeffrey G Lunn) writes: > > > > This is a subject that I have been thinking a lot about in the last > >couple of weeks. We discussed it in one of my classes and it prompted me to > >write a paper about it. Suppose that one day we are capable of constructing > >computers that are able to think - that is, think in the sense that you or I > >do. They would be able to look at any problem, formulate a hypothesis about > >how to go about solving that problem, then think through the steps necessary > >to come up with a solution. If no logical solution is apparent, this computer > >would perform an educated guess based intuitively on what it "felt" is the > >correct solution, much like humans do in similar situations. > >My question is, > >should we let such thinking machines exist? I feel that people would be too > >tempted to let such machines take over previously human thinking tasks such > >as figuring out difficult mathematical problems or searching for new elementary > >physics particles or even writing poetry. It is possible that by letting > >machines do the cerebral work, the collective human mind would stagnate from > >lack of meaningful stimulation. Then humans would live for nothing but to > >survive and to be as comfortable as possible. I do not consider this a > >meaningful way of life. What do others think? Can mankind develop such > >machines without sacrificing their drive for mental stimulation? Or would > >the situation that I described occur? > > - Jeff Lunn > Actually, the questions you ask are more in line with philosophy more than > anything else...a good thought provoking book that obliquely touches on this > is "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstader (sp???). > In more general terms, is it possible for man to create something as complex > (if not more so) than himself ? I don't know... Is it advisable? probably > not since such a machine eventually might be considered a "god"... Human History provides a lot of examples of people creating technologies which first extended, and later replaced earlier techniques. The car extends the legs. Later physical fitness declines as people use legs less and less. The Television extends communication, and people forget how to talk to one another, the art of conversation declines. The highly organized and mechanized food industry extends our ability to obtain nourishment. Later, people deprived of a super-market can no longer feed themselves from the land - they have lost the ability to recognize edible plants and trap edible animals. A thinking machine would likely create a dependency, as the car, the TV and the supermarket have. A generation growing up without a need to think for themselves might well experience the atrophy of the ability to do so. However, since most thinking depends on the input of (for example sensory) information and the testing of hypotheses in real experience, any thinking machine that did not have human physical attributes and live as a human in a human society would be extremely dependent upon people for input and evaluation of its output. To use such a machine effectively, I imagine you'd have to define your problems and questions very carefully, and develop sophisticated means for testing the value of the output. That would demand a great deal of thought from the operators. I suspect it would not so much eliminate thinking per se as it would introduce a bias in the way people would come to think. The problems people would think about would be the problems that the machine could handle. The way people define problems and questions is usually much influenced by their learned ways of handling problems. A good example would be to compare how people thought about life and meaning before the scientific age, and how most of us ask questions now. 500 years ago academics seriously debated questions pertaining to how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. We tend not to ask that question today, let alone invest a lot of thought in trying to find a 'true' answer to it. It is not even a meaninful question to most of us. Yet it was a very important question to an earlier generation and we have almost lost the ability to understand what it meant to them and why they spent a lot of energy wrestling with it. So techniques and technologies can shape the way we understand ourselves and our fellows, and the way we define and think about that which is meaninful, i.e. how we think and what we think about. Today, a question which is not amenable to scientific answers, like "Does God exist?", fails to even attract any interest from many people - partly because there is no scientific way to address it meaninfully. How we think has, I think, been shaped by the scientific method which is a technique, if not actually a technology. Should be allow such a machine to be developed? Well, can we stop such a machine from being developed? Should we allow television to continue to exist? Can we realistically stop it? I think it is fair for an individual or a community to ask if it wants to be involved with such machines - or TV for that matter - but I don't think there exists the sort of power in the world which could prevent its development if it is, in fact, technically feasible. Such a machine could make some employees more productive, if it were able to think a little better than any significant portion of the population. It's thought would likely be more predictable and programmable than the thinking of real people, and that would have uses in certain industrial and commercial applications. We'd therefore have to do it to compete, you see . . . Of course it would become a god, just as the market has become a god. If the market (especially the international market) demands it, then we have 'no choice' but to do it. We'd give the god power to shape our lives, and the god would, in return, give us a better shot at power and wealth. Like the modern city-dweller who would quickly starve if caught in the woods and fields that were his ancestor's hunting and gathering grounds, a few generations' of thinking machines could leave us quite disadvantaged if we had to deal with real life. But maybe we can make a thinking machine that will be smart enough to solve that problem for us too . . . . =Doug --- isishq!testsys!doug Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com